It’s been a number of years since Rival Sons visited these shores and a similar length of time since they last released new material. And to make up for the delay in albums and to make up for the aggressively average Feral Roots, they came back with two albums with Darkfighter and Lightbringer, the former of which is their best since Great Western Valkyrie. So, armed with those two new albums and lost tie to make up for, it’s unsurprising they travel the length and breadth of the country to ply their wares.
Reliably, Rival Sons have usually got a great, competent band to open for them and tonight is no difference. L.A. Edwards have the task of warming up the Birmingham crowd and it is indeed a task for them. For a town that is usually up for it, regardless of sub-genre on the rock and metal spectrum, they’ve got their work cut out for them tonight. As the band blend country, Southern, Americana, blues and heartland rock together, all of which share commonality at the best of time, it’s essentially cherry picking their favourite parts for their own sound. They’re all competent musicians especially in the vocal harmonies, and as a whole work together which partially comes from the fact that three of the five people on stage are brothers. As they continue, they slowly win over the crowd and manage to move them with “Day I Die” which is dedicated to the brothers’ mother. You can’t knock L.A. Edwards as a band – objectively, they’re great and whilst they’re a touch safe and twee in places, if they happen to open for another band, I’ll be down early to watch them.
Gone is the traditional intro track of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme to be replaced by Darkfighter’s opening track “Mirrors” and given its atmospheric intro, it’s a fitting way to welcome Rival Sons onto the stage and kick off the night. For a band that has never fallen into the messing around category, they certainly don’t do that tonight. Playing Darkfiighter in its entirety and frankly, who can blame them? If they’d missed any tracks from it, it’d be a set sorely wanting for the absent numbers.
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They go straight for the bombast early as hints of garage rock fuel the gritty “Nobody Wants to Die” alongside the evergreen “Electric Man”. Barefooted, frontman Jay Buchanan cuts an impressive figure on-stage and whilst he spends a good chunk of the night strapped to various acoustic guitars, when he’s off the lead, he’s fully off with shades of Jim Morrison to him. However, there’s some vocal issues from him as the first couple of songs sound rough and raggedy, his belts sounding more raspy and gnarled than usual. However, by the time they hit the afore-mentioned “Electric Man”, he’s sounding just like he did on the album nine years ago as if he had to work up through the gears to get to where you’d expect him to be.
That slight niggle aside, it’s a set which borders on perfect. Taking the Clutch route and playing a different set every night, there’s a couple of staples missing tonight in the form of “Pressure and Time” and “Torture” but they more than make up for it with what’s present. Moreover, it’s a set which lasts a mighty two hours. How many bands put in a full two hours these days? As they hit the sombre but majestic “Rapture”, the swagger of “Bird in the Hand” and an early showing of Lighterbringer’s “Mercy”, it’s a sign of a band firing on all cylinders, starting strong and continue to do so the rest of the night. The heart-rending “Where I’ve Been” is preceded by an engaging monologue form Buchanan as he discusses mercy and forgiveness acting as two sides of the same coin, that it’s taught to us so early in life and the characters within the song and their real-life counterparts.
Alongside the vocal gymnastics, Scott Holiday remains effortlessly cool on the six strings – the same kind that you get from the likes of Scott Gorham and Phil Campbell. Taking a couple of extended solos within songs and at the end, it’s the light and shade he adds which shows his prowess. He knows when to tinker with a number and when to play it note perfect as you’d hear it on the albums, his slide work beefing up the songs and showing that you have to be an exceptionally good band to justify only one guitar. And in the case of Rival Sons, it is.
It’s the final few songs where the band push the boundaries of how good they are, saving all the best songs to further elevate the night with the standard of “Open My Eyes” ushering in the final stretch of the night. It’s always been a Zeppelin-on-steroids song, drenched in fuzzy tones from Holiday and Buchanan’s vocals pitch perfect as bold and boisterous as they sound on the album. “Face of Light” remains as enthralling as ever, its mixture of soothing tones with roars allows the band to show their entire palette. Meanwhile, one of the rare gems of Feral Roots (the other two of “Too Bad” and the title track already putting in an appearance), “Shooting Stars”, is played by Buchanan solo on his acoustic guitar and alludes to the Israel/Palestine conflict, calling the events “vicious, bloody, gross things” before adding one of the most powerful sentences of the night: “Just leave the kids alone”. It’s a song which has a message of hope – that good should and does have the power to counter bad. To bring the mood back up, “Keep On Swinging” closes out the night including some call and response and whilst it’s not as grandiose as “Torture”, it’s still a great way to end an incredible evening.
Whilst it’s great to have such a heavy Darkfighter set, Head Down and Pressure & Time each only get a look in with one song while Before the Fire and Hollow Bones don’t show up at all tonight. But now that they’re eight albums deep, it makes sense for them to mix it up every night and those that were able to attend more than one show on this tour probably got to hear all their favourites across several nights. It says a lot about Rival Sons’ catalogue that the perfect setlist from them is at least three hours long. And as performers, they haven’t missed a step, still as potent as ever.
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Photos by Gavin Lowrey
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